The US banking giant Chase has made clear that taking advantage of a system “glitch” to extract cash was “fraud, plain and simple” despite it becoming a TikTok trend.
Chase Bank’s warning on Monday came in response to viral social media posts where customers purportedly tried to withdraw more money than they had in their accounts by exploiting a banking system delay.
Users claimed that they knowingly deposited bad checks for often large sums of money, and then withdrew the money from Chase ATM’s right away, before the check could bounce, according to People.
Chase said in a statement that they fixed this problem and warned sternly that the trend was in fact just simple check fraud.
“We are aware of this incident, and it has been addressed,” Chase commented in a statement. “Regardless of what you see online, depositing a fraudulent check and withdrawing the funds from your account is fraud, plain and simple.”
The number of Chase customers who tried to do this is not immediately known.
One video posted on social media shows purported participants shouting with joy and throwing cash in the air. Other videos, however, show purported participants then later upset after seeing huge negative balances on their bank accounts once the bad checks had finally bounced yet their withdrawals of cash were still accounted for.
Social media users who observed the viral trend unfold frequently reacted with humorous quips.
“Check kiting. It’s called check kiting. And it’s been around since the invention of… checks,” Cornell University law professor Dan Awrey wrote on X.